Happy Birthday, Teagan
by Peppery
Summary: A late birthday present for my Lone Wanderer; a short scene between Teagan and her father on her tenth birthday.


Teagan hugged herself around her BB gun, pressing the end of the barrel against her cheek. Her hair was limp against her pillow now; it had come halfway out while she was shooting, and she had clawed the hair-tie out before taking aim at another radroach.

She was not, however, thinking about that, or how great a shot she had been even on her first try. What she was thinking was keeping her up, and she could not stand to stay awake another moment. She threw off her covers and, forgetting to leave behind her BB gun, crept across the room to her father's bed.

She knelt beside him for a while and listened to the soft murmur of his breath. Her own eyes closed and her breathing slowed to match his.

"Dad," she whispered. Again, louder. "Dad?"

James turned over, wakened by his daughter's lonely voice. When he saw her face, green eyes framed by auburn hair, he blinked and rubbed his eyes.

"Teagan? Are you all right? Why are you up?"

"I…" Teagan hesitated, now that she was facing him, but she had to know. "I wanted to ask about Mom, because you said 'If only your mother,' at the party but you never finished because the Overseer gave me my Pip-Boy," she was talking faster and faster, still in a whisper, "and I wondered if she'd be upset that I tried to punch Butch and if she would have helped make the cake and maybe if she had then she would have cut it and Andy wouldn't haven't destroyed it and I wonder if she'd like the hat Stanley—"

"Calm down, sweetie." James touched his daughter's hand and Teagan stopped. Then he scooted across the bed and patted to spot next to him. "Here, climb up and I'll tell you all about your mother."

Teagan burrowed under the cover and rested her head against her father's shoulder. Her BB gun lay abandoned on the floor, as James would discover that morning when he accidentally kicked it across the room.

"Your mother would be so happy to see her little girl ten years old. Now if she had seen you trying to defend yourself from Butch's bullying, she would have stepped in and stopped the fight before either of you got hurt."

"Like you did?"

James tucked his daughter's hair behind her ear. "Yes, like I did. She would have been more sensible, and given Butch a good talking to…she would do something to help that family…" He trailed off for a moment, but Teagan's inquisitive look brought him back. "Was it the cake next?"

Teagan nodded.

"Your mother would have made it, and made me help." James chuckled. "It mightn't have gone too well—she was a much better scientist than baker. I know she would have frosted it with pink, blue, and green. Pink, because you're her little girl."

He touched Teagan's nose. She smiled.

"Blue, because outside, outside the Vault before we were sealed away two hundred years ago because of the war, there's a great expanse overhead called the sky." James spread his hands wide as though to encompass its vastness. "It's like the huge domed ceiling in the Atrium, only it isn't made of metal, and you can pass through it if you could fly. And it's bright, bright blue."

Teagan pulled out a fold of her jumpsuit and showed it to her dad for inspection. "Like this, Dad?"

"Yes, just like that."

"What about green? Why would she frost it green?"

"Because you have the greenest eyes I've ever seen." James cupped his daughter's chin in his hand. "Because before the war, everything was the same green as your eyes."

Teagan put her hand on his wrist. "And yours, Dad. We have the same color eyes."

"Well, look at that. I guess we do. Now, cutting the cake? Well, she wouldn't let anyone but herself touch it until it was served. Was that all?"

"My baseball hat. The one Stanley gave me, would she like it?"

"My dear girl, she would have loved it." He bent his head and kissed his daughter's brow. "Like she loved you. Like I love you."

Teagan smiled vaguely, but she was slowly, and finally, drifting away to sleep.

"Love you too, Dad," she said, before her eyes closed.

James took her hand and held it. As he often did when he thought of Catherine, he whispered, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst—" Teagan's small, tired voice joined his "—of the fountain of the water of life, freely."


End file.
